320 Analysis of Scientific Books. 



75 lieues de longueur. Les memorables travaux do Dolomieu, les 

 descriptions des Alpes de Saussure, furent consultes ; mais ils ne 

 purent exercer une grande influence sur les travaux de Werner." 



We suppress the remainder of this long paragraph, as less im- 

 portant. What Ave have quoted is sufficient to shew that the 

 critic is worthy of the subject, and each of the other. It will 

 also tend to justify our own criticisms ; for it is perfectly impos- 

 sible, that any man really acquainted with geognosy, with the 

 facts known, the history of the science, or its present state, 

 could have formed such a judgment, or written such a paragraph. 



Werner did not create " la science geognostique." He did 

 little ; and of that little, nearly all has proved to be wrong. 

 There is not one of his general laws that has not been found 

 utterly false ; and if he ever became possessed of any facts, he 

 proved that he was incapable of reasoning from them. The whole 

 mass, nearly, of false induction and bad reasoning to be found 

 in this science, is to be traced, directly or indirectly, to Werner 

 and to Freyberg. It was, perhaps, a minor crime, that he taught 

 what was untrue or useless, when he was the efficient cause of the 

 ignorance and bad reasoning of a whole army of followers and ad- 

 mirers ; and is still the night-mare of the science. If we have begun 

 to shake off his paralyzing influence in England, it is far otherwise 

 in. France and Germany ; and we, as far as we can, will not 

 allow M. Humboldt to go on blowing the trumpet, because he 

 himself has no other ideas of geognosy than those which he de- 

 rived at and from Freyberg. We have as little animosity against 

 Werner, or his ghost, as we have against M. Humboldt, person- 

 ally, or impersonally ; but we will maintain, that to perpetuate 

 the praises of him whose dogmas are the impediment of a rising 

 science, whose assumed infallibility is the stumbling-block of 

 students, is a crime that demands and deserves reprobation, 

 because it is adding to the weight and immobility of the great 

 obstacle to our progress in that science. 



It would require a whole essay like this, instead of a paragraph 

 or two, to examine the details of Werner's demerits in geognosy, 

 and to prove him, in category, wrong. We cannot undertake to 

 do it now, and moreover, it is a disgusting and a dull office, 

 but what right has M. Humboldt to say, that the observations of 

 Dolomieu " could not exercise any great influence over the 

 labours of Werner ?" If he meant it in irony, it would be true 

 enough ; since that dull and obstinate man shewed, through his 

 whole life, that he was as incapable of making use of any one 

 fact, and as unamenable to reasoning, as he was ignorant of all 

 the necessary knowledge whiqh was indispensable to the office he 

 had undertaken. Wrapt up in his own unintelligible and impossi- 

 ble theories, he was satisfied with reigning a demigod or a pope 



